So you can still use Flash to navigate, even though you shouldn’t

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At the end of 2020, Adobe, the creator of Flash, abandoned the development of Flash technology as it had announced at the beginning of that year, a technology that had been the most used in web development, but due to the large number of holes What a security I had, it was impossible to patch them all without completely redoing it. Furthermore, HTML 5 had already taken hold and offered the same functionality as Flash, while taking up much less space and being much more secure.

Currently, it is very difficult to find browsers or applications that allow us to load websites in flash or the files generated with this application (.swf). At SoftZone we have compiled the best options available today for this task.

Use a virtual machine

Microsoft, like Chrome, Apple, Firefox others, stopped offering support for Flash between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. In the case of Microsoft, both Edge and Internet Explorer offered support, natively deactivated, for Adobe Flash. But, with the release of the KB4577586 update, support for this technology has been removed.

This patch that removed native support for Flash in Windows, Internet Explorer, and Edge was included in the 20H2 update. If we have an old version of Windows 10 on a USB, a version other than 20H2 or later, we can use a virtual machine such as VirtualBox or VMware to install it on our computer and be able to use both Edge and Internet Explorer to visit websites that still use Flash .

we can also use Rufus, an application that allows us to create bootable USB drives through ISO images. This application also allows us to download all versions of Windows that have been released, so we can use it to download version 20H1 or the previous one, 19H2 to later install in a virtual machine.

Download Old Windows

Downloading older versions of Chromium

With the release of version 88 of Google Chrome, the search giant shelved support for Flash technology. Although until then, the reproduction of this type of content was disabled by default, when visiting a web page, we could activate the plugin so that Chrome would load the content, but not before warning us of the danger involved in carrying out this operation.

When Google releases a new version of Chrome, it removes the previous versions from its servers, since, as usual in all new versions of any program and operating system, the new version has fixed the security problems they had, so to prevent users from being at risk by downloading old, out-of-date versions, they remove them from circulation. This same case applies to Windows. If we want to download Windows 10 or Windows 11, Microsoft only allows us to download the latest version available at that time.

If we want to download old versions of Chrome, which, in this specific case, conversion 87 would be perfectly worth us, we can do it through this page website where all versions of Chromium are available, from number 75 to the most current, versions for both Windows and macOS and Linux. Chromium is the project on which Chrome is based as well as most of the most used browsers except Firefox.

Flash Browser

In the Microsoft Store, strange as it may seem, we can find various browsers that offer support for this technology despite being a danger to any computer. Flash Browser is one of these applications, a browser based on the versions of Firefox that at the time offered support for Flash technology. The application hardly has any configuration options, despite being based on Firefox. The download of the application is completely free and is available through the following link.

Flash Browser
Flash Browser

Using extensions for Chrome

Despite the fact that Chrome stopped offering native support for websites designed with Flash, it has not prevented us from finding a large number of extensions in the Chrome Web Store that allow us to reproduce this type of content.

SuperNova SWF Enabler

SuperNova is the extension that web pages for Flash games that still work recommend to users in order to continue enjoying these games. Although most of these web pages migrated their content to the HTML 5 format, thus expanding their range of options to be available on more devices (HTML 5 is compatible with all mobile browsers), we can still find game pages that continue to live in the past.

SuperNova SWF Enabler

The operation of this application is very simple. By default, the extension is disabled. When we visit a Flash page, we must click on the extension and select the Enable Adobe Flash Player button. We can install this extension both in Chrome and in any other Chromium-based browser such as Edge, Opera and Brave.

Flash Player+

Flash Player+ is one of the extensions available in the Chrome Web Store and with which we can visit any web page that includes Flash content. This extension, like most of those available for Chrome, is designed to allow users to play the content of game websites in Flash.

Flash Player+

When we visit a web page in Flash, in order for the available content to be reproduced, we must click on the extension and select the Add flash from actual page button.

flash-player
flash-player

FlashPlayer – SWF to HTML

As its name well describes, with the FlashPlayer extension, we are not going to play the content directly in the browser, but it will be displayed in a new window after being converted to JS in a process that only lasts a few seconds. More than an extension to play content created in Flash, it is an emulator that is responsible for playing the content independently of the browser.

FlashPlayer - SWF to HTML

Unlike other extensions, for FlashPlayer – SWF to HTML to start working, we just have to click on the extension to open the emulator and display the content of the web where we are.

Flash Game Emulator

Flash Game Emulator is one of the options available in the Chrome Web Store to play both web pages through the integrated emulator and all kinds of files in .swf format. An interesting function that this application includes is that it allows us to add Google Drive links where we have stored the files in this format. When we access a website with Flash content, we must click on the extension icon to play it.

Flash Game Emulator

Extensions for Firefox

If we don’t want to know anything about Chrome or any other Chromium-based browser and our main browser is Firefox, we can use one of the different extensions available for this browser. Unlike the Chrome Web Store, the Firefox extension store informs us of all extensions of this type that are monitored by Mozilla, so if we install them, we do so at our own risk.

flash-player

With more than 69,000 downloads, we find the Flash Player extension, an extension that, when we visit a website that includes Flash content, will invite us to click on it to download the content to our computer. Once downloaded to our computer, to play it we must access the index that the extension creates with all the content it downloads, be it videos, games or other types of files.

flash-player
flash-player
Developer: Vanchi Flash

Flash and video download

Another of the extensions that we have at our disposal if we use Firefox as the main browser is Flash and video download. This Firefox extension allows us to download flash videos and any type of content created in Flash to play locally on our computer. The extension automatically detects the content available in flash and invites us to download it through the extension.

Flash and video download

Flash and video download
Flash and video download
Developer: Download Flash and Video Team

Which is the best option?

Before starting to assess which is the best or worst option when it comes to playing content created in Flash on our device, we must be clear that, in the case of extensions, none of them install the Adobe Flash Player software, they only emulate it on our device.

Once I clarify this point, it is easy to conclude that using extensions, whether for Chromium-based browsers or Firefox, are the fastest and most comfortable option. If we come across a web page that the extensions are not capable of emulating, using an old version of Chromium is a much better option than creating a virtual machine with a version of Windows prior to version 20H2.

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